Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Music To . . . BLOW YOUR LIFE!
This is my first venture into the magical realm of J-Pop music ( I guess most of you know, that means Japanese pop). My exploration was fostered by a recent trip to Japan town in San Francisco, where i managed to stumble upon a book and cd blowout sale. My coconspirator and music consultant, Gabriel Gilder and I picked up four cds, between two and four dollars. These CDs were chosen according to a variety of factors, cover art, misuse of the english language, and price. There were two stand out albums in the bundle.
High Blow Your Life by an artist that Google translates from Japanese as Electricity Bee Maquis. It is an amazing album, chock full of bizarre English phrasing and lyrics. Moreover, it had a genius packaging, including little paper inserts for each song on the album. The image above is from the song Ride on Five which is my favorite song on the album. The chorus lyrics are "Free Ride, Ride on Five," and given the image on the paper insert, I am not sure I want to know what they are singing about. The insane keyboard action, psychotic synthesizers and a strange solo at the end with some type of horn instrument make it hard to pin down the genre of this band. It is some combination of Space Jazz, Techno, and Disco; not your average Dance Dance Revolution song. In fact, I can't imagine this being played in a club anywhere, ever.
The second Japan Town find is an album by hiro:n called Mangosutana.
Hiro:n seems to be a very cute female Japanese pop star. I am only guessing she is a star, because Warner Music produced her album. It is definately far more moderate and mainstream than High Blow Your Life. It sounds like Japanese lounge on some songs and Japanese Jackson Five on others. The greatest song on the album,Tokyo City, is sort of a disco ballad. The secret key to this song is the surprise Japan-rap toward the end of the track, which ends in the lyrics "monkey on the door." Listen for yourself, let me know what you think.
// posted by niki @ 3:51 PM
